


gently simmer, do not boil

by lyresea



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bahrain, Gen, Post-Episode: s01e22 Beginning of the End, kinda jossed now, there be horror here, warning for horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2349299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyresea/pseuds/lyresea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s harder to keep your centre during the night.</p>
<p>(or: May deals with Berserker Staff Round Two.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	gently simmer, do not boil

**Author's Note:**

> Sneaking in a post-finale fic just before the end of hiatus. Currently un-betaed. Thanks to Oparu for making me calm enough to post it.

You breathe in and the flames lick their way up your arms, down your spine, scorching your skin with memories. You breathe out and the itch gnaws deep through your bones, to your soul, where you can’t dig far enough to scratch. You glide forward, lean down, and ribbons of runes and rage borne by a staff twist their way around your heart and through your veins, bleeding your history and their shadows.

Your body flows, shifting from one position to another to another, and you need to sleep, you want to sleep, but your body hasn’t yet reached that point. Last time it took booze and fucking Ward. This time you've already fucked Ward up, and still your body burns.

*

You run.

 

(You hate running.)

*

Fitz is asleep, quieter than the oft-told baby who never reflected real life. Fitz is in a coma, his face pale, his hands still when they should be sparking ideas from their fingertips, that juddering astonishing science from his mouth, from his brain, so quick and so rapid that his body can barely release the energy in time.

The machines beep steady and slowly. Your hands curl into fists.

You place your palms against his sheets, and stretch your fingers long; the joints gape like lace, but your hands don’t relax. They are claws, long curled iron claws, forged in fire and bonded with steel, and they reach out to brush his hair back from that pale face but you stop yourself before you touch him, before your rage can reach him.

Your heart beats through your chest as fast as his voice should, but Fitz only sleeps on.

*

The warm scarlet slides over your claws and stains your skin and you can taste the thickness in the back of your throat. There’s no one here, not here now, but you can see them (you see them every day) and today they’re here in jagged black and white with a dash of fervent technicolour: jet black hair, midnight eyes, flaking dead skin, that rich apple-red crackling blood.

The blood smears across the back of your eyes and you’re glad you didn’t touch Fitz; he doesn’t need more caresses from the dying.

*

Triplett sits on a chair outside Fitz’s room, his arms crossed against his chest, head drooping down, muffles of shifting clothes as he twists side to side. He sleeps like reeds over the riverbank and, were you to be anyone else, you know he would wake to the harsh wind in your lungs.

The rage slips through your stomach, spreading like oil, pooling and waiting, always waiting.

Trip guards Fitz’s room, feet firmly planted to the ground, that steady smell of earth almost outweighing the smoke through your skin. He is a fresh wiry sapling from the seeds of ancient oak, resistant and solid and strong against the weed of a man like Garrett. Hands folding the earth, kneading it, supporting it, refusing to be moved.

Your fingers ghost along his shoulders, embers spiralling through the air.

*

In the hall, they lie in still straight lines, bony decaying arms pulled wide, limbs and heads attached by the loosest of dried ligaments. They are mangled rotting wooden crosses, laid forth as warning to be swallowed by the sodden dirt and burned by the wildest fires. You recognise their charred faces as they collapse to sharp ash, scarring your lungs as you inhale and grating the whites of your eyes.

All forests can be destroyed with but a single spark, and so were all your people.

*

Skye sprawls across her sheets, limp as a fading balloon, head resting in the crook of her right elbow, sunny yellow quilt like the days that are gone crumpled against her back. Her left palm rests flat against her keyboard, an electronic blanket for a hopeful girl who was never truly safe.

In another life, you think she could have been yours: a happy child, a fierce child, vibrant and laughing and bright, flitting with the butterflies and soaring above the trees. Her long dark hair twirls behind her as she turns to you and grins and is never ever hurt.

In another life, you could have loved her without the fear that one day she would become you.

You pick up the quilt to pull it across her body, careful to only singe the corners.

*

She dances in the corner, prances forth and turns, a little golden lightning girl with heavy thundering eyes, where the shadows swirl around and within. She’s as high as your hip, and she smiles at you, sugar and spice and everything nice and slithering tendrils of storm clouds.

You bare your teeth back because that is how all animals greet.

She opens wide her little rosebud mouth and out pour the screams of murderous crows, a feathery twister to destroy and damage, all the better to peck out your eyes.

*

You can’t find Coulson. You know you should be worried, but your brain is split like a heart in two, and part of it lies on a frozen mountain peak while you are low beneath the earth, struggling through the core.

You close your eyes and listen to the beat beyond the ground. It scratches the steel of his spine, scours his human side away. You were sent here for him to trust, and all he sees is a betrayal.

But it is just your mind. Coulson is okay.

The worry slides down your throat to be swallowed by your bile.

*

They march on through the base, heavy steps in lines of blue: a petrol sea stalking you. You run and you flee and your feet flop forward, stumbling to scurry anywhere but here. They keen the cry of a thousand deaths and it feeds your bleeding ears, tosses hot pokers through your brain. You trip and your fingers claw at the cement, into the cement, and it is cool against your fingertips, your forehead and your face. They lift their arms and reach to you and their papery skin caresses your cheek. _Kindly_ , they murmur over your collapsing neurons, _gently_ , they sigh through your pulsing blood, and it is worse than any bullet that has ever gone through your gut.

*

A crash of steel striking stone in the kitchen and your spine arcs up. Jemma, brilliant Jemma, she is all that’s left.

You sprint to the kitchen to find her curled over the floor, face hidden by hair, hands buried in a bowl. Jemma whispers to herself, threads of syllables floating across the room, then slams the bowl onto the bench and dumps a fresh cup of flour into it. It’s soon followed by a spoonful of sugar.

But the sugar turns to ash as she pours it, turns to the falling powdery remnants of your people, and you watch in horror as she adds another spoon. You take a step forward to warn her, to save her, but her head jerks up at the scuff of your feet on the ground. She stares at you, brown eyes wide, oily tears at ruddy corners.

You wonder what she sees.

“May,” Simmons asks, forehead crinkling like fresh cellophane, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” you say, and it’s a slimy sick lie that coats your tongue. Your anger leaps and the heat flashes and the ash keeps falling, but her worried eyebrows lift and her mouth tightens and she looks at the bowl, hands spread either side, and you breathe in deeply because you know you’re not angry at her. You look and breathe out away from her. “What are you doing?”

Simmons stabs at her eyes with her smooth open palms, swallows her heavy tears down her throat. “We were going to make pancakes. Fitz and I. At Providence, before-“

Before. Before the vicious lies became violent truths; before the machetes were thrust into your backs to carve bloody valleys around your hearts.

“Fitz is alive.”

Simmons nods.

“He’s getting better.”

She nods again, scrapes more tears away. You step closer to her, place a hand on her shoulder for some stretch of comfort, the small amount you can provide and can only hope it doesn’t burn her, when suddenly she turns and she hugs you, arms gripped fiercely around your waist, as though she’s drowning in a river and you are her brittle harness. But _she’s_ the strength of the water, a fresh trickling stream maybe a little flooded with rain, patiently whittling away at the rocks.

She washes something in you away. You wrap your arms around her back.

This time, you breathe _her_ in and the fire in your spine goes out.

Simmons steps back, a blush streaked across her cheeks, but you grasp her hand before she can flee too far. You open your mouth and inanity falls out.

“Waffles can be easier than pancakes.”

But Simmons frowns and ignores your words, staring at your hand. You follow her gaze to find swollen fingers, rose bleeding to purple. She gently turns your hand over, then walks her fingers up your arm, to your shoulder, and peels back the top of your jacket.

*

Hands shave down your back, stripping your skin in furious lengths, wielding the sharp edges of a shattered smile. You are laid bare, sinewy raw pink flesh weeping to the ground. They tan your soul with _it’ll be okay, let her go, it’ll be okay_ as they drag you out piece by piece, and at the end, when they scoop out your liver and heart, all they will find is charred leather.

*

A needle and thread slip through your skin.

*

Your stomach stuffed with waffles, and the world calms to a smoky haze.


End file.
